SoundLives
Frank J. Oteri
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SoundLives, a NewMusicBox podcast, is brought to you by New Music USA, the resource for adventurous creators and listeners in the US and beyond.
This program is funded in part by: the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs – and listeners like you.
Available episodes
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Aug 16, 2023
Episode 24: Žibuoklė Martinaitytė: Unexplainable Places
Growing up in Soviet-era Lithuania, where people were often afraid to express their real feelings, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė discovered early on that music was safer than language and that it could enable her to express her innermost feelings without self censoring. It ultimately led her on the path to becoming a composer whose music is performed all over the world. Although Žibuoklė now divides her time between a democratic Lithuania and the United States, her formative experiences have led her to explore a sonic vocabulary, which though frequently inspired by nature and always deeply emotive, is completely abstract and open to multiple interpretations. This hour-long conversation with Frank J. Oteri also features excerpts from eight different pieces of Žibuoklė's music. Learn more about her and read a complete transcript of the conversation on NewMusicBox: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/zibuokle-martinaityte-unexplainable-places/
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Jul 20, 2023
Episode 23: inti figgis-vizueta: the ability to grow
inti figgis-vizueta creates music that carefully balances experimentation and practicality. In her conversation with Frank J. Oteri, she likens her compositions to plants which have the ability to grow and change when different people performing them. And in the last few years inti's music has been championed by an extremely wide range of musicians from Roomful of Teeth to Ensemble Dal Niente to the Kronos Quartet.
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Jun 1, 2023
Episode 22: Brandee Younger: A Hip-Hop Baby Transforms the Harp
Brandee Younger has carved out a very unlikely music career for herself, a classically-trained harpist who went from making her jazz debut over a decade ago to being an in-demand leader and collaborator in a wide range of musical genres. How she has transformed this instrument seems without precedent. But a huge role model for her was Dorothy Ashby, a jazz and later R&B harpist and composer who, in the years since her death, has become one of the recording artists most heavily sampled on hip-hop tracks. Brandee Younger's latest album, Brand New Life, plays tribute to Dorothy Ashby, by taking her poly-stylistic inclinations even further.
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Apr 4, 2023
Episode 21: Tina Davidson: Listening Through The Journey
The story of Tina Davidson's life, which is the basis of her newly published memoir Let Your Heart Be Broken, is extremely intense but also a rewarding reading experience just like the emotional roller coaster rides in so many of her musical compositions make for very compelling listening. She explained to Frank J. Oteri in this conversation recorded in March 2023 that "when you write about yourself, you really make yourself incredibly vulnerable." In addition to talking about the book, they also talk about many of Tina's musical compositions and the podcast includes excerpts from seven of them.
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Feb 15, 2023
Episode 20: Kevin Puts: Keeping Secrets
Composer Kevin Puts takes pride in keeping secrets, both by being understated in his interactions with people and by never initially giving away all the goods in his music, preferring, as he tells Frank J. Oteri, "to keep something in reserve so that there's a payoff for the attentive listener." But in their hour-long conversation, he'll reveal some of the secrets behind The Hours (his Metropolitan Opera debut), and Contact (his triple concerto for Time for Three which just won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition), and much more. Read more at NewMusicBox: newmusicusa.org/nmbx/kevin-puts-keeping-secrets/
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Dec 7, 2022
Episode 19: Tania León: The Rhythm of Life
The new music community has been impacted, inspired and transformed by Tania León as a musical creator--as well as an interpreter, educator, and organizer--for decades. In the last two years, the rest of the world has caught up with her. In 2021, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her extraordinary orchestral composition Stride which was given its world premiere performance by the New York Philharmonic just a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic reached New York City. And in December 2022, she was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors along with George Clooney, Amy Grant, Gladys Knight, and the four members of the Irish rock band U2; to mark the occasion all were greeted at The White House by U.S. President Joe Biden. Back in 1999, Tania León was the very first composer featured in a one-on-one conversation for NewMusicBox; with this new SoundLives podcast recorded more than 23 years later, she is the first person ever so featured twice!
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Oct 19, 2022
Episode 18: Elena Ruehr: Turning Emotion Into Sound
Elena Ruehr’s prolific output is a by-product of her maintaining a consistent composing schedule (five hours every day from Noon to 5:00pm) as well as her never-ending inspiration from the visual arts and her constant reading (four books a week), plus her desire to communicate with listeners. As she explained to Frank J. Oteri in this hour-long conversation about her music which features excerpts of nine of her compositions, "It's all about turning emotion into sound. As far as I'm concerned, that's my job; that's what I do."
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Aug 10, 2022
Episode 17: Victoria Shen (Evicshen): The Landfill of Meaning
Victoria Shen's needle nails technique, which was appropriately earlier this summer in a Beyoncé video, is just one of many new approaches to making sounds that Shen (who performs under the moniker Evicshen) uses in her provocative performances and installations. But even though all the sounds she makes, and often all the devices she uses to make them as well, are her own creations, she is ambivalent about describing herself as a composer as she tells Frank J. Oteri in this NewMusicBox podcast. To learn more about Shen and to see as well as hear more of her work, please visit NewMusicBox: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/victoria-shen-the-landfill-of-meaning/
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Jun 29, 2022
Episode 16: Raven Chacon: Fluidity of Sound
While the idiosyncratic graphic scores of 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning composer Raven Chacon are stunningly original in their conception and have been recognized as works of visual art in their own right (several are in this year's Whitney Biennial), they have a larger social purpose. WARNING: A little bit after the 44 minute mark in this hour-long podcast there is an excerpt of a musical performance involving shotguns.
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May 16, 2022
Episode 15: Anthony Davis: Any Means Necessary
For Anthony Davis, whose compositional aesthetics are an amalgamation of several different musical traditions (jazz, Western classical music, gamelan), different kinds of music recall different emotional states and experiences in terms of what the music implies. So it's inevitable that he has devoted so much of his compositional energies to opera, and in particular to using the operatic medium to tell stories that either deal with significant historic events or which focus on important social concerns. As he tells Frank J. Oteri in this latest episode of NewMusicBox's SoundLives podcast, "What we face now ... has made it more urgent for me, as an artist, to present things to challenge those forces." Read more on NewMusicBox: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/anthony-davis-any-means-necessary/.
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Mar 23, 2022
Episode 14: Sarah Hennies: Getting at the Heart of a Sound
How we perceive sound on a psychological level as it unfolds over time is key to the sonic experiences that Sarah Hennies creates. Despite the extremely broad stylistic range of her output, everything from her early collaborative work as part of an experimental rock band to a multimedia documentary to extended duration solo and chamber music compositions for various instrumental combinations, it all shares a concern for extremely precise sonic gestures and involves a great deal of repetition. While Sarah Hennies prides herself on scores that are extremely economical (a score for a nearly 34-minute piece is a mere two pages), the sonorities feel extremely generous.
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Feb 28, 2022
Episode 13: Alice Parker: Feeling the Same Emotion at the Same Time
Composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher Alice Parker has been a fixture of the choral music community since working with the legendary Robert Shaw Chorale when she was fresh out of college in the late 1940s. As she explains to Frank J. Oteri. Parker has devoted herself almost exclusively to music for the voice, since she strongly believes that people find their common ground through
singing together. Read more at NewMusicBox:
https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/alice-parker-feeling-the-same-emotion-at-the-same-time/
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Jan 18, 2022
Episode 12: Huang Ruo: Creating Four Dimensional Experiences
For Huang Ruo, music--like theater--exists in a four-dimensional space. As he explains to Frank J. Oteri in this latest episode of NewMusicBox's SoundLives podcast, there is also a larger purpose in most of Huang Ruo's work, whether it is to call attention to stories of people, particularly Asians and Asian-Americans, whose voices have often not been heard, or to provide an environment for reflection and healing.
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Dec 8, 2021
Episode 11: Matthew Aucoin: Risking Generosity
Among the recurring themes in talking with composer-pianist-conductor Matthew Aucoin is generosity and risk-taking, something that is in abundance in Aucoin's own music as well as his personality. Over the course of an hour, Aucoin talks with Frank J. Oteri about his opera Eurydice, which was just performed at the Metropolitan Opera; the first commercial recording of his music; his just released new book about opera, The Impossible Art, which was also just released; his desire to develop new musical repertoire that addresses climate change; his critique of Pierre Boulez, and much much more. Read an introductory essay and a full transcript at NewMusicBox: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/matthew-aucoin-risking-generosity/
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Nov 3, 2021
Episode 10: Terri Lyne Carrington: A World of Sound Waiting for Us
NEA Jazz Master and three-time Grammy Award-winner Terri Lyne Carrington was practically born into jazz, but she is not a traditionalist. By embracing elements from rock, rhythm and blues, and hip-hop into her own compositions, she is making music that is very much about the present moment. And in founding the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice and now partnering with New Music USA on the new Next Jazz Legacy program, Terri Lyne hopes to build a future that dismantles the jazz patriarchy and eliminates the gender imbalance among instrumentalists.
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Sep 9, 2021
Episode 9: Renée Baker: Nothing's Gonna Stop You From Creating
Spending an hour chatting with Renée Baker about her more than two thousand musical compositions and perhaps almost as many paintings was inspirational as well as motivational. Especially during this time when the ability for anything we do to have a certain future seems somewhat precarious at best. But Renée does not let anything deter her and while her music is extremely wide ranging and gleefully embraces freedom of expression, her daily schedule is precise and meticulous.
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Aug 4, 2021
Episode 8: Adolphus Hailstork: Music is a Service
"Music is supposed to have meaning," says Dr. Adolphus Hailstork whose music captures the tribulations and the occasional triumphs of African Americans in this country. Hailstork's 80th birthday year got off to an impressive start with a performance of his music as part of the Presidential Inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden. Since then there has been a world premiere of a concert aria he composed to commemorate the centenary of the Tulsa Massacre and he awaits the premiere of his recently completed Fourth Symphony.
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Jul 7, 2021
Episode 7: Susie Ibarra: Hybrid Culture
A week after her first live concert performance since the pandemic, composer & percussionist Susie Ibarra talked with us about: a year of making music under quarantine; her collaborative approach to working with other musicians; her explorations of jazz, classical music, traditional Philippine music, and even indie rock; drums as melodic instruments; and the gender stereotyping of percussion in different genres and cultures.
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May 5, 2021
Episode 6: Ricky Ian Gordon: My Way of Enveloping a Story
For the past 20 years, Ricky Ian Gordon has been creating works for the stage—operas, musicals, or one-of a-kind music/theater hybrids—and getting them produced one after another, seemingly without a pause. But 14 months ago, everything came to a screeching halt as the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic. Read a full transcript of this conversation over at NewMusicBox: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/ricky-ian-gordon-my-way-of-enveloping-a-story
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Apr 2, 2021
Episode 5: Pamela Z: Expanding Our Imaginations
The only thing that is almost as exciting as watching and listening to a multimedia performance by Pamela Z is to hear her talk about it which she does for almost an hour in a fascinating conversation with Frank J. Oteri that spans a wide range of topics including: creating and performing during the pandemic; her artistic beginnings as a singer-songwriter and how she transitioned into an experimental composer; a difficult encounter with TSA agents; dealing with constant changes in technology; and her obsession with old telephones. Read a complete transcript and see and hear some of Pamela Z's music on NewMusicBox: nmbx.newmusicusa.org/pamela-z-expan…-imaginations/
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Mar 4, 2021
Episode 4: Judith Lang Zaimont: The Music She Has to Write
Judith Lang Zaimont is defiantly unwilling to be typecast for creating music in a particular style, which makes her music always a welcome surprise. NewMusicBox editor Frank J. Oteri talks with her constant reinvention and re-evaluation of her music for solo piano, chamber ensembles, orchestras, and Jewish religious services. To read a complete transcription of this podcast, visit NewMusicBox: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/judith-lang-zaimont-the-music-she-has-to-write/
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Feb 15, 2021
Episode 3: Valerie Coleman: Writing Music for People
Valerie Coleman is committed to storytelling through her music, no matter the idiom. NewMusicBox editor Frank J. Oteri talks with her about her early realization that she is a composer and what a composer's responsibilities are. To read a complete transcription of this podcast, visit NewMusicBox: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/valerie-coleman-writing-music-for-people/
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Feb 2, 2021
Episode 2: Julie Giroux: A Wind Band is a Box of 168 Crayons
Julie Giroux, who creates music primarily for wind band, takes musicians and audiences on a journey that is a real sonic adventure and, at the same time, is always fun. NewMusicBox editor Frank J. Oteri talks with her about the ins and outs of the wind band (including an in-depth discussion of her own wind band symphonies), her career in Hollywood (which led to her being the first female composer to win an Emmy), her wacky arrangements of Christmas songs, and how she’s coping with life in quarantine. To read a complete transcription of this podcast, visit NewMusicBox: nmbx.newmusicusa.org/julie-giroux-a…f-168-crayons/
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Jan 27, 2021
Episode 1: Kris Bowers: In Love With Accompaniment
Kris Bowers is among the humblest and most introverted composer/performers which is astounding considering his accomplishments—winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition at 20, a daytime Emmy four years ago, and now one of the most in-demand composers for film and television, most recently scoring the popular Netflix series Bridgerton. And yet it all makes sense when you begin exploring Bowers’s incredible versatility, his openness to all genres of music, and hear how attuned his music is to whatever project he is working on--Kris Bowers creates music that is attuned to whatever project he is working on--whether it’s the score for the 2018 motion picture Green Book, the 2019 EA Sports videogame Madden NFL 20, the 2020 Phyllis Schlafly-inspired Hulu series Mrs. America, or the 2021 Netflix sensation Bridgerton.
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